Michel Richard

“I sold them the recipe,” was all the chef offered. And he stressed that “we must try harder every day,” a not-so-subtle hint that things could be better. Otherwise he was mum.

Photo by Chris Shott

For a concept as prosaic as ground meat shaped into savory spheres, the new Penn Quarter eatery simply called Meatballs sure has generated a lot of buzz.

Part of the hype is probably due to the restaurant’s brash marketing strategy. Consider the eye-catching signage out front, which heavily emphasizes the word “balls” in large capital letters.

Another big attraction is the famous chef at the forefront of the project: Michel Richard, the celebrated French toque behind acclaimed fine-dining destinations Citronelle in Georgetown and Central in Penn Quarter, as well as the newly opened Central Las Vegas at Caesar’s Palace.

This unique combination of culinary celebrity and cheeky advertising has provided the place with a slew of pre-opening publicity. Virtually every food blogger in town had posted photos of the interior, weeks before the planned launch this week. The restaurant was expected to open Wednesday, but city inspectors had yet to give it the green light. Leading up to the long-awaited opening, it seemed, the whole D.C. food scene had been talking about Meatballs.

Well, except for one guy.

“I really don’t want to be in public involved with this,” says Mark Bucher—a pretty strange request for someone whose name and notarized signature appears all over public records on the project.

Bucher is the creator and operator of Cleveland Park’s popular steak frites spot Medium Rare, as well as the founder of BGR: The Burger Joint, with locations in Dupont Circle, Bethesda, and elsewhere.

Ask him or his PR rep about his possible involvement in the new meatball shop and you’ll get a pretty firm denial. Neither “Mark nor BGR is involved in this,” Bucher’s publicist told me last week. “[N]ot/never,” she later clarified via email. Contacted by phone, Bucher, too, initially denied any involvement.

Then why has he taken such an active role behind the scenes?

The restaurant’s application for a liquor license, for instance, notably lists only one owner or partner in the business—and it’s not Michel Richard. That lone proprietor, according to the application: Mark Bucher, described as the “managing member” of Meatballs E St, LLC, who also, as the paperwork helpfully notes, holds licenses for BGR Dupont LLC and Medium Rare Cleveland Park LLC. (See the documents below.)

The number listed on the application as Meatballs’ business telephone rings Bucher’s cell. Placards posted in the windows of the restaurant appear to have been doctored with correction fluid to conceal Bucher’s name as the listed contact, but the posted phone number is the same.

Lest you think this stated managerial role carries merely a minority interest in the actual business, the application pegs Bucher’s stake in the venture at 100 percent.

Yet, despite having certified in writing “under the penalty of perjury” that he is the “true and actual owner of the business,” Bucher still insists that he has zero ownership stake in Meatballs. “If there is something that says otherwise, that is inaccurate,” he says.

According to him, the real “true and actual owner” is a company based in New York called Food Research Corporation. “Michel Richard is the front man on it. We all like him to be the front. It’s important for lots of reasons, but they’re the ones that have put the money up, and they’re the ones that have backed it,” he says.

Bucher describes his role as merely advisory. “I’m helping my friend,” he says. “I’m helping Michel. I’m not an owner of this thing at all. I’m just helping him get coordinated.”

Contacted for comment, Richard’s usual rep at Central and Citronelle, Mel Davis, curiously referred me to Bucher.

That Bucher and Richard are somehow collaborating on the concept isn’t much of a surprise. Richard was often mentioned as a consultant on the launch of Bucher’s Medium Rare restaurant this past spring; its opening chef, Cedric Maupillier, previously worked for Richard at Central. Bucher also credits Richard with helping him launch BGR.

Neither restaurateur can really take credit for coming up with the idea for Meatballs. The menu submitted alongside the liquor license application isn’t even original—it’s a print-out of the offerings at the similarly themed Meatball Shop in New York, which also seems to be the inspiration for all the D.C. eatery’s ballsy humor. “You’ll get thirsty eating our balls,” the New York menu reads in its drinks section. A different menu, inviting patrons to “pick your balls” from a list of classic beef, chicken, lamb, crab, or lentil, was posted in the windows of the D.C. restaurant on Wednesday.

What’s odd is Bucher’s caginess about the whole thing. Given his résumé, he would seem an ideal candidate to help spearhead the development of this kind of project. Like Meatballs, his prior restaurant concepts, BGR and Medium Rare, are both tightly streamlined operations, focusing on a single food form—burgers and steak, respectively—served in fashionable but casual surroundings. And both appear to be thriving enterprises. BGR currently boasts 17 locations either open or in the pipeline from Arlington to Alabama, according to the company’s website.

Meanwhile, stop by Medium Rare any given night of the week, and you’ll see a location bustling with diners, despite its limited menu of gravy-smothered sirloin caps, fries, salad, and bread. Ask Bucher about the steak frites place, and he isn’t the least bit shy in talking it up: “People love it. It’s consistent. It’s a rule-breaker. And it just continues to do great.” His biggest concern seems to be whether to expand the concept to other corners of the city or simply keep it as a single location.

Bucher’s pedigree is also more in sync with the style of service planned for Meatballs. BGR, in particular, is a similar quick-serve sort of joint, complete with the vibrating buzzer to signify when your order is ready for pickup and the DIY satisfaction of self-busing your tray to the nearest trash bin when your meal is over.

Contrast that with the résumé of Richard, whose other restaurants are the sort of fancy full-service places that refold your napkin every time you leave the table.

French chefs aren’t typically known for their meatballs. But Richard has shown a real knack for elevating Americanized comfort foods. His burger at Central, topped with a crispy potato tuile, is often mentioned among the best in the city. And his take on fried chicken inspires similar raves.

For a chef of Richard’s caliber, mastering the meager meatball shouldn’t present much of a challenge.

Getting a handle on the assembly-line pace of a quick-serve business, though, could be a different story.

According to Bucher, any behind-the-scenes effort on his part is purely to help ease his chef buddy’s transition into this altogether foreign form of food service.

“I’m helping him learn quick-serve,” Bucher says. “Learning quick-serve is very different than Central and Citronelle for him—staff and training and speed of service and line set-up and equipment. There are lots of things in quick-serve that move differently than in a fine-dining restaurant.”

That certainly explains why Richard might seek Bucher’s help in developing the concept. It doesn’t explain why Bucher is putting his neck on the line legally for a business that he claims to have no actual financial interest in. “Friends help friends,” he says.

No matter what the forms say, Bucher says he couldn’t be an owner in Meatballs because it too closely conflicts with BGR. “It wouldn’t be appropriate for my partners and investors in Burger Joint,” he says. Burgers, meatballs—it’s all ground beef, right?

As for why Bucher’s name and signature are on the legal documents for Meatballs instead of Richard’s, Bucher says it was sort of an oversight. “He probably should’ve been, to be honest with you,” Bucher says. “I think it was a speed issue and we just moved fast.”

Whatever his official level of involvement, Bucher can’t seem to distance his public persona from the project fast enough. Following this week’s planned opening, he says, “my work there, my help there, is done.”

He insists his future ground-beef ambitions come purely in patty form: “Burger Joint’s on a huge trajectory—that’s my full-time focus and attention.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Meatballs, 624-A E St., NW

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Deviled eggs, like the common hot dog and macaroni and cheese, are one of those classic comfort foods that have lately taken on a sort of contemporary chic—and, in some cases, sheen.

To wit: One recent evening at Boundary Stone in Bloomingdale, a plate of the $3 hors d’oeuvres arrived in the standard fashion—hard-boiled, bisected, and served cold. Except for one glaring element: The yolks were frickin’ pink! What horrible deformity had befallen that poor chicken embryo?

Thankfully, the blushing semi-orbs didn’t taste all that abnormal. They were just slightly sour and a tad tangy. It seemed no genetic mutation was at play here, nor was this some ill-conceived promotion to benefit the Think Pink campaign for breast cancer awareness. “I take some pickled beet juice and add that in with the yolk to make the deviled mixture,” chef Vincent Campaniello later explains.

When I made a return visit a few weeks later, the eggs had changed from bright pink to a sort of greenish gold. They smacked of heavy salt and spice, as well as a more subtle flavor that I couldn’t immediately identify but eventually found out to be dill.

This sort of guessing game has become commonplace at the increasingly hip neighborhood’s newest boîte.

A woman sitting next to me at the bar, who described herself as a “deviled egg snob,” claimed to have previously tried three different colors of eggs at Campaniello’s rustic-looking restaurant on Rhode Island Avenue NW: pink, orange, and purple. Her favorite? The orange—though she added that she had no clue what was in that one.

“My deviled eggs will change nightly depending on what I feel like playing around with and putting in them,” says Campaniello, whose Sunday trips to nearby farmers markets often dictate what sort of creamy egg filling his patrons will be eating for the next week. “I try and give the people something new.”

Despite the mystery, or maybe partly because of it, the bar snacks have become quite popular sellers, according to the chef. “I get a lot of questions sometimes,” he says. “But once [customers] try them, they fly out of here. I get in trouble stocking them. I’ll think I make enough orders and they’ll be gone with plenty of time left in service.”

Campaniello’s eggy experiments underscore a larger trend. At D.C.-area eateries, the summertime picnic staple has become as common an appetizer as fried calamari, yet as varied in preparation as pizza.

Perhaps the local standard-bearer of the genre is 2Amys in Cleveland Park, where deviled eggs have been listed on the menu since the restaurant first opened in 2001. Peter Pastan’s place is best known for its traditional Neapolitan-style pizza, but the eggs are outstanding. They win my vote for best in the entire city. The yolk filling tastes of curry, but not overpoweringly so. And, the accompanying oily green sauce—whipped up with chopped parsley, pickles, anchovy, capers, and mustard seed—piles on the salt.

Prior to the pizzeria’s opening, Pastan, also proprietor of Obelisk in Dupont Circle, had served the dish at local fundraisers. “Either people would get it, and they’d be like, ‘Oh, who doesn’t love deviled eggs?’ or, they’d be like, ‘What? Deviled eggs?’ like it was nothing special,” says 2Amys co-owner Amy Morgan.

Between the deviled delights and other egg-laden recipes, 2Amys generally goes through about five cases of eggs each week, she says. That’s 150 dozen.

In recent years, other venues have tried to elevate the old cold egg in weird ways, with varying degrees of success. At Ray’s to the Third in Arlington, the latest establishment in beef-centric restaurateur Michael Landrum’s empire, the traditional yolk mixture is tossed out entirely. Landrum instead fills his white ovals with steak tartare and smothers them in Hollandaise. The powdery yolks are scattered about the plate as a sort of garnish along with some pickles, capers, and diced onion. Call me old-fashioned, but the yolk is where the payoff is. Relegating it to the side is just plain wrong.

Retro-chic comfort food, like overpriced pet food, seems to cause marketers to break out the puns: At Ray’s, the classic deviled descriptor is altered to “devilishly good” on the menu. At Founding Farmers, the Foggy Bottom church of farm-to-table dining, eggs filled with lobster, crab, and salmon-infused mixtures are labeled “devil-ish.”

* * *

Economics may help explain the ascension of the old-school, albumin-rich dish to prominence on local menus. Eggs are cheap. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average retail price of a dozen grade-A eggs in September was less than $2. Slice each of ’em in half and your profit margin on the main ingredient instantly doubles.

Another financial factor: Prominent local chefs I’ve interviewed give me the distinct sense that they think the cure for our current national economic malaise involves healthy doses of mayonnaise, plus yolk.

“In these times, people are looking for what comforts them,” says Boundary Stone’s Campaniello. “I’ve done the five-star fine dining and everything. People aren’t really looking for the white linen service anymore. They want to come in and just enjoy the simple things that spark a little memory.”

And yet, even some of the city’s finer dining establishments are churning out deviled eggs. Consider Central, where fancy French chef Michel Richard serves what his compatriots calls œufs mimosa, a quartet of creamy egg halves topped with marinated anchovies called boquerones, for $7. They are quite good. The seafood topping is neither too fishy nor too salty.

At Richard’s even fussier Georgetown location Citronelle, a more traditional version of deviled eggs also appear on the menu of a special pre-theatre promotion honoring the Washington Ballet’s upcoming production of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic jazz-age novel The Great Gatsby. (The story’s action, you’ll recall, takes place in fictional West Egg.) It seems that what was good for the dapper gents and flapper-clad gals of the roaring ’20s is also perfectly suited to the 21st-century high rollers still raking it in within the Beltway’s yet-unburst bubble.

On the flipside, you find the same style of finger food getting hands sticky inside some of the District’s dingier dives. At DC9, where former Frank Ruta acolyte Amber Bursik now helms the kitchen, deviled eggs help ease the sting of whiskey shots and ear-ringing indie rock.

Bursik infuses her egg filling with pimento cheese. It’s a natural extension of the chef’s go-to morning-after remedy: grilled cheese filled with the pimento spread. “That’s one of my favorite hangover foods,” she says.

Add some paprika and a sliver of real pimento on top and you’ve got one potent bar snack. “It’s got a little bit of a smoky flavor to it, then it’s kind of sweet, a little salty, a little cheesy, and a little eggy,” she says.

Beyond the homey appeal of the dish—“They remind you of your childhood, they’re tasty and they’re kind of a guilty pleasure,” the chef says—Bursik floats another reason why folks flock to local restaurants for their deviled egg fix: “They’re a pain in the ass to make for yourself.”

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Boundary Stone, 116 Rhode Island Ave. NW

2Amys, 3715 Macomb St. NW, (202) 885-5700

Founding Farmers, 1924 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, (202) 822-8783

Ray’s to the Third, 1650 Wilson Blvd., Arlington

DC9, 1940 9th St. NW, (202) 483-5000

Michel Richard

Items reportedly on the menu at Meatballs include traditional, lamb, crab, fried chicken and vegetarian meatballs topped with your choice of sauces: marinara, alfredo, morel mushroom and one that will rotate.

Photo by Albondigas_de_lentejas/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

Photo courtesy of Michel Richard Citronelle

But, you probably could've guessed all of those.  As the Baltimore Sun duly points out, "Think of this an update of the previous edition, with 119 new listings. But established restaurants have not been re-rated and re-ranked—that happens every other year."

Read Y&H alum Tim Carman's definitive piece on the survey, "Dear Zagat," here.

The editors promptly tore it apart, word by word. I’m not sure how many editors had a say on my first draft, but it felt like management was treating my Y&H debut as the journalistic equivalent of a tackling dummy. I figured it was a test of my mettle, particularly when an editor told me I wasn’t brilliant enough to use metaphors. I couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting, but I knew for certain that if I were to survive as the City Paper food columnist, I was going to need to develop thicker skin. This was no place for wallflowers who want to craft their prose in monk-like solitude, guided only by their “muse” and some arch, overly precious sense of the food world. The editors stood steadfastly against preciousness on all fronts.

Half a decade later, I look back on the edit of that first column (sample comments: “Fuck this; I hate this equivocation. Forget what I said up top about you keeping a strong POV throughout this piece” and “I don’t give a flying fuck what your entrée was!”) with a mix of nostalgia and bile-churning, spit-hurling anger, which was probably the whole point. Editors had time back then to find your pressure points and see if, by pressing them, they could make you a better writer and reporter.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to turn my farewell column into some sentimental, revisionist claptrap about how journalism needs more editors who treat their reporters like Bo Pelini treats his star quarterback. No, I’m just reflecting back on how much things have changed in five years, starting with the very job I’m leaving. Back in February 2006, when I officially became the paper’s next Young & Hungry, I wrote exactly one column a week. I went through at least three drafts on each column. I answered further questions from the copy desk. I didn’t blog at all. We didn’t even have a blog at City Paper. And today? Well, let’s just say I miss the old work load.

The food and dining scene has experienced its own growing pains. Consider that in late 2005:

• Washingtonians had a president who never visited restaurants. George W. Bush was content to sit in the White House, choking down pretzels while watching football. By contrast, Washington now has a president who has stopped at some of the area’s most recognizable restaurants, both high and low end, from Komi to Five Guys Burgers & Fries. In one instance, the president’s visit propelled a popular eatery, Ray’s Hell Burger, into the stratosphere. Owner Michael Landrum was forced to put his planned seafood restaurant on hold and expand the Hell Burger empire. That’s a good problem for a local restaurateur to have.

• The District boasted restaurants by Todd English and Charlie Palmer, but our biggest celebrity chef was a Frenchman, Michel Richard, who dared to base his operations in D.C. In the intervening years, chefs of varying celeb status have decided to throw up a restaurant and drill down into our wallets. On one end you have a TV-generated, semi-celebrity like Spike Mendelsohn who has also made D.C. his home, while on the other, you have a Michelin-star hoarder like Alain Ducasse who thought he’d send some emissaries down to D.C. and start cashing in on his considerable reputation. There are benefits on both sides of this star spectrum, but there are also sinkholes. Some of these culinary carpetbaggers take dining dollars (and sometimes kitchen talent) away from the home team.

Michel Richard

• Roberto Donna still had his Galileo empire. He not only had the flagship restaurant, but also the Osteria and the Laboratorio. He was also hawking grilled sandwiches on the sidewalk outside of Galileo. Five years and one failed restaurant later, the chef returned to D.C. with a storm cloud over his head. He owes taxes to Arlington County, owes money to former employees, and owes the people a better accounting of his abuse of public money.

• H Street NE was a great spot for fried whiting and a tall boy. No strip has changed as much as this patch of Northeast. The Ohio Restaurant was one of the early pioneers on H Street, hawking chef-driven soul food from a ragged outpost at H and 14th streets. But other dining destinations soon popped up. Granville Moore’s, Taylor Gourmet, Sticky Rice, Liberty Tree, Biergarten Haus, H Street Country Club, The Atlas Room. These (and others yet to come) are turning the street into a dining destination. Imagine what the area will be like once the city completes that goddamn streetcar project.

• Unless you count those motorized hot dog wagons down by the National Mall, the District didn’t have a single food truck. D.C.’s streets have made a remarkable turnaround in the past two years, breaking the death grip of the depot owners who have controlled the city’s curbside eats for decades. If and when the D.C. Council ever passes new vendor regulations, you can expect to see even more variety on our streets. I know for certain that Kushi, my current favorite for Japanese cooking, plans to launch a yakitori truck in D.C. But what the District really needs, as a colleague recently pointed out, is a gourmet coffee truck. Nick Cho, are you listening? Have you paid off your tax bill yet?

• The craft beer craze was just in its embryonic phase in the District. We had brewpubs, of course, but if you wanted to sample the best of the world’s craft beer, you pretty much had to give your money to Dave and Diane Alexander, whether at the Brickskeller in Dupont or Regional Food and Drink in Chinatown. These days? You can’t wander the streets without running face-first into a Dogfish Head tap. Craft beers are everywhere. Rustico (two locations now, with perhaps more to come), CommonWealth Gastropub, Pizzeria Paradiso (three locations), Meridian Pint, Brasserie Beck, Granville Moore’s, Black Squirrel, Restaurant 3, and the mother of all beer emporiums, ChurchKey, have transformed D.C. into suds city.

• Peter Chang and Fabio Trabocchi were still cooking in area kitchens. At the time, Chang was mesmerizing diners at TemptAsian Cafe in Alexandria, while Trabocchi was blowing away patrons with his gourmet takes on Italian cooking at Maestro in Tysons Corner. Within two years, both Chang and Trabocchi were gone. But after a rollercoaster ride in New York City, Trabocchi is returning next year to open Fiola in the former Le Paradou space in Penn Quarter. And Chang? Well, after forcing his fans to follow him around the country like jilted lovers, the chef has apparently settled down in Charlottesville, where he’s scheduled to open Peter Chang China Grill in January. Has anyone started a pool yet to see how long it lasts?

• The Washington area had only three four-star restaurants, according to Tom Sietsema’s 2005 Dining Guide. They were Maestro, Citronelle, and the Inn at Little Washington. Sietsema’s latest Dining Guide listed five four-star performers. Citronelle and the Inn made repeat appearances on the list, joined by Komi, Rasika, and Restaurant Eve. A previous four-star restaurant, CityZen in the Mandarin Oriental, was nowhere to be found on Sietsema’s 2010 survey. No one can accuse the critic of ratings creep at the top end.

• The boutique pizza market had two main players: Pizzeria Paradiso and 2Amys (OK, and maybe Ella’s). The pie options today are stupefying, a reminder that the recession continues to force many restaurateurs into safe, cheap, and consumer-friendly choices. The new pizzerias are too numerous to mention, but here’s one indication of how ridiculous our pie market is today: Not one but two Frenchmen have opened pizza joints (Pizze in Woodley Park, and Seventh Hill in Capitol Hill), no doubt generating a small forest of raised eyebrows among the Gallic community, which tends to view Italian cuisine as something to feed the family pet.

• There was no Urban Daddy, no Thrillist, no Tasting Table, no TBD, no NBC Feast, and damn few bloggers ambitious enough to fight for every scoop that used to land like a butterfly onto the lap of print journalists. The competition for information today is fiercer than ever.

With this week’s column, I’m ending a City Paper tenure that has had its own mood swings. My beat and responsibilities have had to evolve and expand to reflect a changing media environment as well as a changing culinary one. This is the truth of modern journalism. We must find new ways to look at old subjects. We must venture beyond our usual circles to find the next person who wants to revolutionize what we eat. Anyone in my line of work knows that food can never, ever be treated like something too precious to withstand tough scrutiny. But my time at the paper, from that brutal first edit back in the one-column-a-week days to the radical shifts in job responsibilities that accompanied the old news media’s discovery of the Internet proves that we dead-tree types are more adaptable than you think.

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Allow me to offer a disclaimer before I start: You can trust my picks for the District's best shopping districts as much as you can trust Bernie Madoff's financial advice. Through years of selective focus, I can walk through any neighborhood and ignore all manner of shoe shops, clothing stores, and perfumeries, my mind singularly focused on the latest eatery to open its doors.

As such, you'll have to cut me some friggin' slack if I missed one of your favorite shopping meccas. This ain't my area of expertise. So, with that in mind, here are the best neighborhoods to mix shopping and eating on Black Friday, the day that I personally plan to stay at home, far from the marauding hordes armed with their razor-sharp plastic cards.

• Dupont Circle: I've heard you can buy good shit around here. I know you can eat well, although that hasn't always been the case. I think some recent additions have significantly improved the dining in Dupont, particularly in the fast-casual area, which will probably capture most of the shoppers on Black Friday. You can't go wrong (well, you can, but not usually) at BGR: The Burger Joint, Panas Gourmet, Sweetgreen, Nando's Peri-Peri, and even Pizzeria Paradiso (if the place is on its game that day.) For more upscale options, you have the exquisite Obelisk and the newcomer Eola.
• Georgetown: With a few exceptions — Citronelle, La Chaumiere, and Leopold's Kafe + Konditorei — I've long considered Georgetown a wasteland of food options, a tourist destination where many eateries are content to slide by on mediocre fare. The neighborhood has improved of late. I like the big juicy patties at Thunder Burger & Bar (and the craft beer selection). I admire the Neapolitan pies at Il Canale, and I know I can always get some decent sweets at Georgetown Cupcake and Baked & Wired. And if all else fails, I can just slip into my favorite little bistro in the area.
• U Street Corridor/14th Street Strip/Logan Circle: OK, granted, this is really several neighborhoods clumped together, but what the hell. It's the holidays. I'm feeling generous. The dining options in this area have exploded. The hard part is not finding a decent place to eat, but deciding which one to pick. There's Masa 14, Teak Wood, Bar Pilar, Oohhs & Aahhs, Cork Wine Bar, Great Wall-Szechuan House, Little Ethiopia, JJ's Cheesesteaks, and, of course, the mother of all beer emporiums, Birch & Barley/ChurchKey. I know where I'll be shopping this holiday season.
• Capitol Hill/Barracks Row: I've heard this is a good shopping area, but I have my doubts. I do know that you can get quality bites in the neighborhood. You, of course, have Spike Mendelsohn's fast-food two-fer, Good Stuff Eatery and We, the Pizza. Come to think of it, casual dining (some more refined than others, obviously) rules in this neighborhood. You have Matchbox, Ted's Bulletin, DC-3, Zest Bistro, Montmartre, Ba Bay, Market Lunch, Taqueria Nacional, and Tunnicliff's Tavern. If you want to take a few steps up the gastronomic ladder, you can always hit a pair of restaurants run by two of the District's most notable chefs: Johnny's Half Shell under Ann Cashion and Bistro Bis under Jeffrey Buben.

Good luck with your shopping on Friday, and please, someone, let me know when it's over.

Forget about D.C. Slices. This new truck, which can be found every Sunday at the Bethesda Central Farm Market on Elm Street, redefines the term "hot rod." Fired Up Pizzas is a mobile pie unit with a built-in wood-burning oven. Its creator, Dennis Friedman, has a seriously gourmet background, including stints at Citronelle, Daniel, and Kinkead's. Check out Friedman's story about auditioning for Daniel Boulud on Thanksgiving.

More food truck news after the jump.

• TBD reports that another food truck/cart has launched in MoCo: Chez Dikel, which can be found in Silver Spring on Colesville Road, apparently serves a fusion of French and Malian dishes, although the writer shares no specifics on dishes. Like the District Taco cart, Chez Dikel fled to the 'burbs while D.C. continues to battle over the vending regulations.
• Dangerously Delicious Pies, the Baltimore pie hole that opened a shop here earlier this year, is looking to take its act on the road. By the look of DDP's Facebook page, the operation already has a vehicle wrapped and apparently ready to roll.
• Finally, Y&H received word through backdoor channels — as in the operation started "following" me on Twitter — that The Big Cheese will be hitting our streets soon. At first blush, DCRA had not yet heard about said Big Cheese. More as we know it.

The fruits of summer at the Mt. Pleasant Farmers Market

While not-so-delicately sipping pea soup, topped with an aggressive layer of Parmesan foam, I knew it was over. With the arrival of fall equinox, J&G Steakhouse will soon rid its menu of any traces of warm weather, like this terrific soup and the watermelon salad.

I started to think about how, once again, I have to say goodbye to tomatoes and eggplants, cut-off shorts and abbreviated work days. I'm already equipped with a long cardigan for nights out.

While I'm sad to leave behind beach trips and unbearable heat, I'm not ready to say goodbye to melons, beans, and multi-colored peppers. Summer allows embarrassingly easy meatless meals. Throw your farmers market goodies on the grill. Serve with grains, crumbled feta, and a mustard-filled vinaigrette.

Coite Manuel of Food Chain, a supplier of barbecue and burritos — not Polish sausages disguised as half-smokes — to D.C.'s street vendors, understands that summer's bounty of fresh produce practically begs for vegetarian eating. His favorite dish is a childhood holdover: a summer pasta of fresh tomatoes and plenty of melted jack cheese.

Ris Lacoste, chef and owner of RIS, doesn't get out of her kitchen as much as she'd like, but she did enjoy "a lovely unctuous, silky eggplant gazpacho, garnished with cherry tomatoes, jalapeno and, of course, potato crisps, at Citronelle on Tuesday.  All the vegetables tasted fresh from the market, just the way they should.”

"This summer I've been eating Sweetgreen's heirloom tomato salad which is delicious," gushed Alex Nicholson, who writes the laugh-out-loud food coverage at Brightest Young Things. "I like that salad because of the Parmesan crisp they crush into it." She's also quick to point out, "I make terrible salads."

Jonathan Neman, one of the guys behind Sweetgreen, assured me that although the tomato dish was August's featured salad, it will still be around all of September. And where does Neman find meatless pleasure?

"Spiced Peach Strudel: lemon-thyme panna cotta, popped blueberries and sweet corn ice cream from Birch and Barley. It's an amazing end of summer dessert. The sweet corn ice cream was surprisingly delicious. We're so used to eating corn in a savory dish so to have it in a sweet dish is such a pleasant surprise. Tiffany [MacIssac], the pastry chef, is a rockstar!"

The countdown is officially on. Find the last of your summer-filled meatless meals before the equinox brings in pumpkin cupcakes, pumpkin soup, pumpkin beer, and pumpkin latte (which, wow, has already started according to Twitter).

Photo courtesy of Bennett Lipscomb